


several atmospheres, several G's

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Lab equipment metaphors, Or like injuries anyway, The Mountain Goats - "Autoclave", actual like actions got in the way of the dialogue with the above references, also an old piece about Kirkegaarde, and a Solzhenitsyn quote, assorted other influences..., but it's coming. There will be philosophical discussion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:43:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus





	several atmospheres, several G's

This is how it happens: there is a woman in his private lair, and he is exhausted and injured and somehow it does not seem fitting or worthwhile or doable to evict her.

His arm is dripping blood from a superficial gash where he caught it on protruding metal, and she sees this, and grabs up a more or less clean cloth to staunch the wound.

"I am no one you would wish to associate with," says Sidious, as a warning, but his voice trembles and he does not pull away. The simple gentle touch feels exquisitely heartbreaking, to this Sith who would have sworn his heart was stone.

"Is this so? How do you know? You don't even know me." she says.

"Are you a fool?" he thunders, jerking back an inch involuntarily as she hits a painful spot, and hears the echo of Cosinga Palpatine (dead some two decades) in his every syllable.

"Perhaps," she quips back, not meeting his eye but examining the other injuries to his hand. "Once the fool was the one who dared to question kings and emperors."

"We are a republic," he says, and it comes out oddly soft, because Sidious could surely only say those words with anger and this rebuke sounds too much like Palpatine.

She shrugs. "You have a sort of splinter, a broken off piece of metal, in the wound. I think it can be easily removed, but it will hurt."

So the injury is less superficial than he had thought— he glances down at it and sees dirty metal in the midst of all that red, red blood, to which he is well inured. A split second later he recalls that women see blood routinely and that may be part of her readiness to help. At the same time, weariness seems to have turned the rest of his body into sludge, and he only petulantly retorts "Pull it out, then!"

She does, and pain shoots through his arm.

"How did you get in here?" he finally asks through gritted teeth.

"Hold this," she commands, and he actually obeys, even though it sends a twinge through his arm. "Through the door."

"But why would you intrude upon a private residence?"

Her eyebrow raises. "It was unlocked, and this area is typically considered abandoned."

Ruefully he mentally allows this as precisely why he'd chosen the area, and hopes she'll let the matter drop, even though he brought it up. These thoughts are in the bizarre middle ground between Darth Sidious, whose lair this is, and his public persona as Senator Palpatine.

"Why would you choose to help me? For all you know, I might be unhinged and attempt to murder you." There is delicious irony in this that he keeps out of his voice; he isn't sure whether he will have to dispose of her yet, but it is certainly within the realm of what Sidious might do.

"I believe most people have enough sanity not to, ah, 'bite the hand that feeds them.' Though I suppose first aid isn't as painless as a good meal."

"That it isn't." he agrees. "I'd like to lie down, I'm extremely tired." So tired that Palpatine's perfunctory politeness is bleeding into his speech, even though he is currently entirely Sidious. He isn't sure why he is now so prone to error and exhaustion, when Plagueis has trained it out of him. Perhaps it is aging, and perhaps it _is_ pretending to be a kindly middle-aged senator getting to him.

"Go ahead, then." She affixes the final bandage with some sort of adhesive, then, without asking, wraps her arm around his waist supportively and leads him to the cot he keeps here. 

The lack of sleep and sheer exhaustion really is getting to him, because his eyes flutter shut and he only dimly half-wakes to the last thing he remembers before deep sleep, a blanket tossed over him, and her curling up on the floor, wrapped in another blanket.

TBC


End file.
